He began his clandestine study of the history of the Stalinist regime in 1953 after Stalin's death, in the hopes of smuggling the manuscripts abroad.

[4] It recounts the contemporary effects of Joseph Stalin's public relations campaign in the aftermath of the assassination of rival Sergei Kirov.

[4][5] A blend of personal recollections, social commentary and political history,[4] the memoir was a best-seller,[3] establishing Navrozov as a prominent Russian dissident.

[6] "It bids fair to take its place beside the works of Laurence Sterne and Henry Adams," wrote the American philosopher Sidney Hook, "… but it is far richer in scope and more gripping in content.

Bellow cited Navrozov, along with Sinyavsky, Vladimir Maximov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, as one of his epoch's "commanding figures" and "men of genius.